Investment bank RBC upped its price target for shares of Apple from $500 to $525 on Wednesday. This on expectations that the company will solidly beat Wall Street estimates for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. They believe Apple will offer healthy guidance going into the second quarter.
Josh Ong reports for AppleInsider:
Analyst Mike Abramsky raised the firm’s target on Wednesday In a note to investors entitled “iPhone Frenzy: Expecting Strong Q1 Results.” The firm expects Apple to announce $40.2 billion in revenue and $11.00 earnings per share, up from prior projections of $38.6 billion and $10.00 EPS, next Tuesday.
RBC believes Wall Street will react favorably to the results because analysts’ expectations were reset after transitions with Apple’s iPhone product line during the September 2011 quarter resulted in a miss.
Ong continued, “Abramsky believes Apple will report fiscal second quarter guidance of $32 billion in revenue and $8.00 EPS. Given that his estimates are slightly above Street guidance of $31.8 billion and $7.94 EPS, the analyst believes Apple’s guidance will be ‘healthy.’ He also pointed out that fiscal second quarter guidance may include more global iPhone rollouts and the expected March launch of the third-generation iPad.”
RBC says it is expecting Apple to report sales of 13 million iPads and 5.1 million Macs during the holiday quarter.
Apple reassured investors during its last quarterly earnings conference call that its fiscal first quarter would be a record-setter.
